


(Un)familiar Results

by agenderleadingplayer



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, The X-Files Revival, who tf knows tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7173260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenderleadingplayer/pseuds/agenderleadingplayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "Tell me about the dinners Mulder takes Scully out to as he woos her again during s10...I'm imagining prior to Maggie passing away, while they're just working, and reconnecting." </p><p>Five meals the two of them have while getting used to each other again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Un)familiar Results

**Author's Note:**

> me: gets a prompt  
> me: Yes Good  
> me: Let's Change It Completely
> 
> nah but this was fun

"come to dinner with me."

she looks at him, doesn't know what to say. had they done this before, performed this awkward dance around each other in the past? she remembers them going to dinner often, back when she was still in love with...

back when they were still together. (although, when were they ever together.)

she shrugs, pulls her arms around her, crosses them defense mechanism. "i...that's very kind of you, but..." she doesn't look up, focuses on her shoes. she doesn't want to look at him, doesn't want to see him too much at once, dinner would be bad. dinner would be dangerous.

he studies her for a few moments and she can feel his soft eyes taking her in inquisitively even though she can't see them. he takes a deep breath. "please" he says, and she wants to pull her jacket even tighter around her waist, run out of this room and slam the door behind her.

but she takes a deep breath and her hands are shaking, she notices (how fitting. how like her. history repeats itself and it starts with dinner far too often, doesn't it); she thinks and realizes she does want to go, wouldn't mind some catch-up time, this might not have been the best scenario but what scenario would be best when they are where they are. "okay," she says, and her voice is stronger than she thought it would be and she smiles, but not at him. or maybe at him, but either way it doesn't matter because he smiles as well and she follows him to his car.

it's a glorified pub, really – not a bar or anything, certainly not one of those holes-in-the-ground you see; they order a table for two and study the menus like they need them to breathe. the candle between them is real, real fire, not those fake ones that you can buy at the craft store, that flicker-flicker inside their plastic flames when you flip the switch on the bottom. no, the fire is real, and it's fitting; she doesn't reach across the table to grab his hand because she is afraid she might get burned.

but, of course, she wants to, why wouldn't she, wants to say _take my hand, mulder_ like a schoolgirl, like 1993. but there is danger between them now, a wall that cannot be breached, or once was breached but grew back, a recurrence. a tumor.

they don't talk and he doesn't look at her when the waiter comes by to take their drink orders. she doesn't know why but it makes her angry.

"why won't you talk to me," she says, but she keeps her voice quiet because she wants this, she does.

he doesn't follow, says "huh?" without meeting her eyes and it seems the roles have reversed from where they had been a mere 45 minutes ago.

"you invite me to dinner and take me to this place and then you don't talk to me."

and he looks at her and takes a breath, _it's been so long and i still love you_ , he wants to say. _if we're being honest, i've just been trying to think of ways to make you laugh again after all these years_. instead, he smiles at her and tries a line.

"i mean, i guess you've just...i mean, i'm speechless because of your...beauty, um." he stops because he knows it's the wrong thing to say, but she's laughing, although it's more at him than anything else, he knows.

she shakes her head and looks at him and for a moment she remembers why she loved him. "that was the saddest pickup line i have ever heard."

he shrugs. "i guess i'm just getting back into the groove of things, you know?"

their food arrives and her fears of eating in silence are extinguished, if only momentarily. he takes his fork in his hand and spins it around. she is still slightly worried about the candle flame. she doesn't know why.

"so how have...things been?" he asks, because it's really the only thing he can ask; "oh i'm sorry i never answered your calls, please don't think it's your fault it is not your fault i am still very much in love with you" didn't quite seem to be the most appropriate remark.

she bites her lip and stares a hole in her salad. it's the wrong question and both of them know it. "they've been all right," she says softly and she can feel his eyes watching her again, pushes the lettuce around in the bowl to keep from looking at him.

she's nearly fifty years old; she doesn't need to be making quiet, clipped rules for herself like don't grab his hand, you'll get burned. but the table is wide between them and she longs for something opportune to come up, an interstate car ride or investigation, the tiny things she wished for when she was younger, excuses to talk uninhibited, not like this, not at a seemingly too crowded dinner table with watchful eyes all around and a flame between them.

somehow, before dinner ends, she finds herself grabbing his hand anyway, intertwining her fingers with his like she'd told herself not to do, like she'd wanted to do since, well really since all of this began again. he looks down, takes in the sight of it; for the third (or maybe fourth, or fifth, or fiftieth) time that night he thinks of looking her in those eyes, thinks of saying i'm still so so in love with you, you know like a child. he wants to get out of here, find a park bench in this cool alexandrian air, free of humidity for once, get ice cream at the ben and jerry's around the corner, make her laugh ( _really_ laugh, baseball lessons laugh, a downpour in front of an open oregon grave laugh) and kiss her hand soft.

instead, he realizes she's finished her salad. "i'll take the check," is what he says, all he says, and she protests, of course, but he shakes his head.

they pass the ben and jerry's on the way to their car and neither of them say anything.

•••

_again?_ she thinks, doesn’t say it out loud. and it’s not an unpleasant kind of _again?_ , more of an eyes-narrowed, brow-furrowed kind of question; last time was fine, but not fine enough to make her want to do it another time, especially not this soon after.

he wrings his hands and shoves them in his pockets. he doesn’t say “please?” this time like a little kid; instead he makes a face at the ground and blinks hard and says “of course if you don’t want to that’s okay also.”

she shakes her head, no, you’re fine, please, believe me. “let me pay this time,” is what she says, all she says, and his face breaks into a smile and she wants to kiss him and immediately feels terrible about it but still smiles as she leads him out of the office.

“where do you want to go,” she asks. they’re nearing chinatown when he stops and grins and points in front of him. “the verizon center?”

he laughs, “no, no…” then leads her into a starbucks.

and now it’s her turn to laugh. “we can’t eat here! you can’t...this isn’t real food.”

“yeah, but…” and she knows, and hates him for it (loves him for it), really, knows why he led her into this goddamned place, had been waiting, hadn’t he. she almost takes a seat in one of the plush chairs near the window, instead decides it’s probably in her best interests to have a coffee anyways, maybe buy a muffin for the two of them.

“so is this lunch?” she finally asks, having paid for their blueberry scone and lemon cake, along with two lattes (hers iced) that taste vaguely burnt but, he had assured her, with enough cream and sugar it fixes everything.

“yeah,” he giggles, and he looks thirty years old again. imagine, she thinks, the sight of the two of them; an old couple (?) in a starbucks that he’d only taken her to for its symbolic resonance; she’d always hated feeling like a metaphor yet here she was.

she sighs, sits forward in her chair facing him, her elbows on her knees, hands clasped between her legs like she’s interrogating a suspect. her necklace dangles down from her collarbone and he definitely is not looking at it. “why are you doing all this,” she asks. why are you trying to win me over, she means. you don’t have to do it again, you’ve already done it once; dinner last weekend was enough to prove that to me.

and he shrugs, obviously not knowing what to say; instead he takes a long sip of his latte and tries not to think about kissing her. “is it...cliche to say i’ve missed you?” and she rolls her eyes and sits back in her seat, crosses her legs and her arms at the same time. (defense mechanism, he notices, doesn’t say.)

“yeah, it is.” but her voice is soft and he can see the ghost of a smile on her face and he picks up their trash and throws it away.

“want to walk around?” and she nods and picks up what’s left of her coffee and they walk out the door together.

they end up passing the office, walking all the way down to the national mall, finding a bench to sit on like they’d wanted that first night. he wraps an arm around her waist and she immediately tenses up.

“i’m sorry, i…”

“no,” she says simply. “it’s fine, it’s…” but it’s not, not really. they don’t bring it up again as she finishes her drink and chucks it in the bin next to the bench and comes and sits back down beside him.

_is it cliche to say i’ve missed you too?_ she wouldn’t say it - it reminds her too much of days when that kind of conversation was normal, when witty banter in dusty motel rooms was punctuated by the imminent appearance of a hospital bed, entering stage left or stage right or maybe even from behind everyone else, where no one could see, could suspect. she remembers nights grabbing his cold, clammy hands as she thought to herself he’s not dying, he’s not; remembers stories he told her of sitting in those godawful plastic chairs they give you next to her bed, kissing her forehead or cheek, willing her back to life or some ridiculous mulder-like notion like that.

but now all that’s between them is a park bench and all that’s in front of them is the green of the mall and the white marble of the washington monument. she leans her head into the crook of his neck, hopes it makes up for the whole hand-on-hip fiasco only minutes earlier.

neither of them apologize but both of them feel like they should; him for taking her to a shitty coffee shop that could be found on every corner of washington and making her pay (which wasn’t the plan), for touching her when she did not want to be touched; her for rolling her eyes at his (welcome) comment, not being able to actually say anything real to him like always, like old days, for wanting to kiss him so goddamn much.

she does not say _i think i’m still in love with you, or maybe i fell out of love with you somewhere along the line but i don’t know why, why or how i ever could, can we stay here on this bench for a while, do you think?_ like she wants to, but she lets him take her hand and kiss it and she can see, damn it, he’s about to cry because of all of this, lets him take her hand and walk with her like that, smile at her or at the ground; she tries not to laugh too hard at the sight of it all.

they make their way back to the office and he kisses her hand again and she does laugh this time. at the end of the day he gingerly places his hand on her hip and whispers “see you tomorrow?” in her ear, like there was a chance she wouldn’t come.

•••

"wait," he says right before they turn a corner. they're back in old town and he feels foolish for doing this, all of this; wonders what she'll think of all of it, will she laugh at him (although he doesn't mind all that much either way). "close your eyes." and she does, and he takes her hand and feels her breathe in sharp, almost lets go but she squeezes his hand back, smiles.

"ok," he says once they've rounded the corner. "open them."

"shut up." she doesn't mean to say it, not really. but the front is brick steps, leading up to a staircase on the inside, a small loft upstairs with a wooden bench; she'd seen this restaurant before, in a newspaper review. five stars.

expensive.

"you can't take me here!" and she's laughing, and so he's smiling, but in all actuality she's worried worried worried; he could barely afford the dinner at the pub last weekend. but this?

he doesn't tell her that it's because he felt bad about letting her pay for his coffee earlier that week. he thinks, doesn't know why, thinks she might start crying any minute; let her laugh, let her laugh.

so he takes her hand, tries to hook his arm in hers. she breathes small, in-out in-out, he shouldn't be spending this much on me, she thinks. she wants to kiss him.

the host has a heavy french accent and leads them up to a gilded dining room, seats them at a booth. she holds the menu light, realizes when he does how little space as possible she is subconsciously trying to take up. he smiles at her from over the menu and she realizes she wants to kiss him again.

"take a look at this, scully," he says, pointing to a forty dollar steak dinner. "nearly rivals the diners i took you to way back when."

and there he goes again talking about way back when, she thinks, finds herself smiling.

he stops talking and it's like they're back at the pub again. her soft "you okay?" breaks the silence and now he's worried he's going to be the one crying, clutched white-knuckles to her navy blazer, sorry sorry sorry. don't leave.

their waiter is tall and takes their order. "and for you, ma'am?"

"i'll have..." and she says something in a perfect accent and the waiter nods and leaves.

"i forgot you knew french."

"oh,um. je peux parler un peu..."

"marry me."

she laughs and he laughs, and she plays with her napkin and says "merci" to the man who fills their glasses with water. they make small talk and it seems more comfortable now, less forced.

by the time their food arrives they both realize that neither of them have much in the way of small talk to say anymore.

"how...how are you? really, how..."

"fine." it's terse and she can tell he sits back in his chair a little bit after she says it. "no, sorry i...i didn't mean to..." she takes a breath. "i'm sorry." she doesn't know why she says it. she is preoccupied with how much the check is going to be. she thinks about asking to take it for him. she will have to fight hard if that's how the night is going to go. she decides to change the subject.

"you really, really didn't have to spend all this money on me, you know." and he gives her a warm smile.

"of course i did."

"let me at least split the check with you..."

"scully."

a breath.

"mulder."

he laughs. "please let me pay for your dinner." and what he really means is if this is the closest we will ever be from now on that's okay, but i can't not give you things because "i'm so, so in love with you."

it's not the first time he's said it. they both remember before (what a silly time frame, she thinks. "before". before what? too many befores, too many afters. stick to years, stick to decades. they're easier to count by.), when he'd sometimes wake up and kiss her head soft, whisper it in her ear or say it through a kiss while she drank the coffee he would make for her every morning without a doubt (it was the best coffee she'd ever had in her life and she will admit it to exactly no one, not even him. she thinks that fact alone would be enough to make him cry and she's absolutely right.). memories come flooding back to both of them too fast for this fancy restaurant, the classical music playing slow over the speakers and the clink of ice against a glass the loudest sound either of them could hear. the napkins in front of them are stained. neither of them will look up.

"are you okay?" she doesn't respond. her head hurts. he takes a deep breath. "dana."

no.

"i have to go."

she leaves fifty dollars on the table and walks out shivering. it's 75 degrees out but even so, she crosses her arms and clenches her teeth and shakes her head as her stacked heels click-click down the cobblestoned old town streets.

too much.

there was a chance it could be too much, turn into something bad bad bad and he'd done it. the restaurant was enough. the "i love you" was crossing a line. but the...

the...

she slams the door of her car and her knuckles are white on the steering wheel. the car is too quiet; everything is too quiet. she cranks up npr as loud as it will go and lets the man's voice flood over her as she closes her eyes, doesn't even start the car for a good fifteen minutes.

she hopes he hasn't followed her, hasn't texted her.

the looming certainty of monday dawns on her; what would she say? "sorry i ran out on you and totally fucking freaked out or whatever i hope the dinner was good"?

when she finally gets home her apartment seems more haunted than normal. she laughs at the clichéd notion of it: the ghosts, her memories, call them what you will. who cares about the ghosts anyway, she thinks. let them come. they don't exist anyway.

•••

she walks into the office monday morning and it is blissfully empty. he hasn't called or texted in three days (although she's still not certain if it's because he could never seem to get his smartphone to work or not) and she sits at the desk that still is not hers and does things to annoy him like messing up his pencils. she immediately feels guilty. she doesn't fix them.

the door creaks and he walks in softly, like he's afraid even the creak of the floorboards would be enough to make her get up and leave. she looks up and stands up and he nearly cracks a joke, nearly says something ridiculous like kiss me like it's new year's 2000 and the world's gonna end. (but they both know the world didn't end and by now he thinks it might have been better if it did.) instead he looks at his shoes. "sorry," he says in lieu of hello.

"hello," she says in lieu of sorry.

he thinks about the ben and jerry's back in old town and how he would really really like to take her there. he doesn't know what to say to her, stands awkwardly in the doorway instead.

"hi," he finally says, at the same time she says "sorry." he doesn't know why she says it, and in all honesty neither does she. they stare at each other for quite some time and he does not want to move.

"are you feeling better?" he decides on asking after the silence gets too loud. she nods slowly and he can tell she's about to say she's sorry again. "don't...apologize..."

and she says, "i am feeling better, thank you" and he says, "that's good" and she wants to tell him it really is okay, she's fine now, just don't do that again and he wants to tell her if he could he'd make it up to her; if he knew how he would in a heartbeat.

she walks over to him and takes his hand in hers and looks at it and he thinks it might be all right. he takes a breath. "if there's anything i can do, you know, to..."

"the tidal basin," she says, and he doesn't understand her at first. "could we, i mean. have lunch there...that's what you meant, right?" she almost laughs. "lunch?"

and, yes, he realizes, lately it's always been lunch or dinner or something like that, something small to take the edge off everything, and now she wants to have lunch with him at the tidal basin and he hopes she knows he'd never say no, not ever.

"sure," he says, and she lets go of his hand and nods.

"okay," is her response, and the day doesn't go as bad as they thought it would and by noon she's beckoning him out the door.

the basin is nearly empty, void of tourists as it's well past cherry blossom season. they sit down, somewhat awkwardly, take paper bags out of their backpacks like kids on a field trip. they're sitting so that they can see the bronze statue of jefferson inside his memorial, and she points it out to him in between bites of her sandwich. he tries not to laugh at the cheesiness, the corniness of it: they're sitting on a forgotten patch of grass beneath half-bloomed trees looking straight on at the third president of the united states.

the wind off the water is blowing her hair in her face and he slowly reaches over to fix it. she smiles a small smile and he hopes he has not passed some invisible boundary, some line that's grown with age. he thinks he should apologize again, so he does.

she looks at him with her eyebrows raised, that look on her face to which she's sure he's become incredibly familiar. "you don't have to..." even though, of course, he did, but one "sorry" was enough, really; a weekend of not-talking had helped her to calm down and now she's fine, fine, all fine. so she says so: "you're...you're really okay, it's okay." and, she thinks, she'd eighty-nine percent meant it.

"okay," he says, half to himself. they both nod and continue staring at the somewhat unfamiliar scene in front of them. we don't really fit here, one or both of them thinks; those motel rooms served us well but here it's too pretty, too pristine; the water is too blue and the memorial is too white, too polished marble for us. but it's a nice notion, one or both of them counters, to think we might belong in this picture, in any picture really, together.

"it's been too long," he muses, and neither of them really know what he'd meant. "i guess...i guess i just...i'd like us back." to normal, is how they both know the sentence would have finished; were not normal, though, she thinks. never were.

but he doesn't really mean back to normal, more back together; your favorite band reuniting for their reunion concert and it's never going to sound the same because, hey, twenty years will do what it will on your voice but what really matters is the sight of them onstage, having so much fun you can almost believe it's the good old days again.

or maybe not, maybe the old days were never good and maybe it would do them well to start over. not at the beginning, exactly, but nearer then than now.

"we can...maybe we can..." she cringes, anticipating the cliché that will soon fall out of her mouth. "...start over?" and he laughs because neither of them had expected her to say it, expected him to be the one to lay it all out, cards on the table.

"yes," he says, simple and plain, not much of a sentence at all, barely there; affirming something she soon realizes she had never needed affirmed.

•••

if he's being technical about it, he's wallowing, having trapped himself in this tiny apartment which he still apparently (without thinking much about it, like you'd talk about a late family member before remembering, suddenly, that they're gone) calls home. he's not thinking about her, or, more specifically, focusing all that oxford university brainpower on not thinking about her, on not picking up the phone and calling her, looking up some random article on google (god, does he love google) just to hear her voice, just to have that ever-common conversation: _hey, scully,_ he might say. _i found something we might want to look into._ and she will sigh but when she speaks he will hear her smiling: _what is it now?_

it's only six o'clock. usually he wants her here with him later than this; usually he reserves wanting for after the sun sets.

someone knocks at his door. "it's open," he sighs, makes a list of all the people it could be. the list is very short. in fact, it is not even a list at all because there is only one name on it. he laughs as she walks in the door because he almost finds it funny.

"why are you laughing?"

"because you're my best and only friend, scully."

"i'm...what?" she is holding boxes of takeout and she looks at him and his apartment and realizes that, firstly, she probably should've called him beforehand, and secondly that the place is too eerily familiar. it feels like a dream – a really good, really weird dream. she considers pinching herself, but then she does not have any desire to clean chinese food off the floor.

"you...nothing, you...brought me dinner."

"i...yes." they stare at each other. he stands up from the couch, makes his way somewhat awkwardly toward his kitchen table. "well, i...i guess we should eat?"

she laughs and he smiles. "yeah, let's do that."

they eat the chinese food and it is very good chinese food. he takes in the sight of her, there with him, in his apartment. he loves it and also her, and tries to tell her so, and does not do a very good job of it.

"i meant that, you know."

"mulder, i don't know what you're saying." but she's smiling, so he continues.

"that you're my best and only friend. i was laughing because you knocked at my door and i tried to think of who it could be and it only could have been you because you're the only one who ever knocks at my door."

"oh. well, thank you, i guess." she's still smiling and even though it might just be due to the food he feels better.

"would you like me to take your plate?" she says after he's finished, and he says "no!" a little too forcefully, gets up and does the dishes.

"sorry i kind of...came uninvited," she says as he's at the sink, and he shakes his head.

"you're absolutely fine, scully." and she is. "i was actually just going to call you when you knocked."

"that's not true."

"what?" he turns the faucet off and dries his hands. "what are you talking about; of course it is." and they're back into whatever the hell they were years ago, this half-flirting kind of conversation where he can sneak a gentle hand onto her cheek and make her smile. she's comfortable here, or at least she's pretending to be, if anything to make him feel better, and if that's anything that's something. he walks back over to her and almost hugs her, decides it might be best not to.

she sits down on his couch, smiles to herself. "i never really thought i'd come back here." she doesn't tell him that she to this day calls this place her almost-home, the all-too-familiar rooms somehow still fresh in her mind like she'd last been here yesterday. she lets the grin become wider when he sits down next to her, remembers how much has happened on this couch.

fifteen minutes pass in silence or near-silence and she stands up. "i think i'm gonna go, okay? i just...i feel bad coming over here without notice, you know?"

he's about to tell her to stay when he sees the obvious discomfort in her face. she thinks she's made a mistake, which she didn't, but he's not about to keep her here uncomfortable. "okay," he says softly.

she opens the door. "wait, scully." she turns around with a half-smirk on her face. he presses a hand to his lips and holds it out to her.

"what the hell was that?"

"what do you mean, what the hell was that? i, you know." he does the gesture again. she raises her eyebrows in amusement. "i...blew you a kiss."

she laughs, real, uninhibited laughter, and he stands up.

"come over here." he walks over to the door and she points to her cheek. "how about you actually kiss me?"

he smiles and does as she'd told him, places a gentle peck on her cheekbone. he feels her smile against his lips.

"see you tomorrow, scully."

"see you tomorrow, mulder." and the door shuts softly behind her. 

**Author's Note:**

> you: madi u can't name every txf fic u write after a death cab for cutie lyric  
> me: Watch Me
> 
> anyway, title from the dcfc song "expo '86"
> 
> thanks for reading! leave a comment if you enjoyed i always love feedback!
> 
> and hmu on tumblr @demiroscully if u wanna ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


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